All Givers Are The Same, But Not All Gifts Are The same

Frank: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Next Sunday podcast. I'm here with Jim Shepard. You know Jim, I usually introduce you with all these superlatives. And you know what? I just don't feel like it right now. I'm not going to give you all those superlatives because your head is so big. You barely made it through the door today. You're so confident that I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

Jim: When you do that, I'm always thinking, wait, I'm going to be yielding my seat to somebody else through the door here in the podcast. This is going to be a special guest that I didn't even know about because I didn't realize that.

Frank: Well, Jim, I'm glad we're together.

Jim: Remember, Frank, the context here. Don't ever forget the context of what's going on here.

Frank: What's going on, Tennessee, Georgia, there's limitations to how good this can get.

Jim: That's exactly right. There's kind of a ceiling on all of this.

Frank: But the good news is apparently a few people listen and it's not been cancelled yet.

Jim: We have not been cancelled and you wouldn't have bet that we made it this long.

Frank: Today about the under, right? Let's move on.

Jim: That's exactly right.

Frank: On today's episode, I was very surprised to hear that you haven't written on this because I've heard it a lot from you. I've heard it from others on our team. It's something that's foundational and well understood, but it's not something that we've communicated well as an organization. And I think it could help everybody that does anything in the area of generosity, certainly in the church world, they should have a clear understanding and a clear way to communicate this concisely and I think you do such a good job of this. So I'm excited for our people to hear this today. I'm excited to hear from you today on this topic, even though we've talked about it many times because I feel like we just have a focused good 20-minute conversation around this powerful idea that all givers are the same, but not all gifts are the same. So, let's tee that up with when you're sitting in a meeting or gathering of churches, usually early on in a conversation, you're sitting down with an executive team, this phrase comes up. In what context, what usually triggers, what question, what statement, what comment is rumbling around between some elders or something that causes you to go, "we need to take a little aside here. I need to talk to you about this concept because you've actually been in the room and seen it happen."

Jim: Absolutely.

Frank: I know the answer. Rarely ever do I ask questions I don't know the answer to, Jim, on this podcast. And you use the word triggered. What triggers you to say this?

Jim: What triggered me to write this even is just this idea that somehow or another the widow and her two coins are the only example in the Bible that we can celebrate.

Frank: Oh wow. So we're talking about generosity, different capacities. Widow and her two coins.

Jim: That's a great story. I don't want to minimize it. It's one of the best. But there's problems with that. Number one, if that's going to be where your theology around giving gets formed, you don't actually know someone who only has two coins. In all likelihood, you don't. I don't. I'd have to go down to the city of Atlanta and find some homeless person or something for me to say, I know somebody like that, and I don't. I don't. And I just think it puts all kinds of limitations around us. It may allow us to justify some of our own behavior in a way that doesn't square up with what the scripture is actually saying in a lot of other places. It takes a very small piece of scripture and attempts to proof text it into a much bigger point.

So those are the things that rise to me as concerns when I hear something like that. Now, with due credit, because I have to give due credit, Mark Dylan, our founding head of advancement, I think is the first person I ever heard say this. The idea is segmentation, right? Is that there are some gifts that are just different than others, but it doesn't make the giver different. And Mark is the first person I think I ever heard say exactly these words. "Hey, Jim, all givers are the same, but not all gifts are." And that to me wasn't a new idea. It codified for me everything that we're going to talk about here.

Frank: So good. Right.

Jim: So this and a lot of this is in finally writing about it is kind of like why I finally wrote under can we please stop saying under compulsion? I just get tired of people misusing something and taking it to a place that I don't believe based on fairly extensive study that scripture intends it to go. And this is one of those places.

Frank: Good. Right.

Jim: And so they will drag out things like, "Well, Jim, you got to be careful. I mean, if you're gonna those you could be guilty of favoritism." That's not the purpose of this particular podcast. But if we take that text inside of James, do the word study and put it into the context of the day, the favoritism that James is actually talking about is not what most people are talking about when they bring this up. He was not really talking about people who were givers. They were people who just had great wealth.

Frank: And you're going to give them a seat down front just because they're wealthy, which goes back to the whole idea of a camel and an eye of a needle. Jesus was using hyperbole to make the point that not that wealthy people don't get to heaven but that your wealth can't get you to heaven.

Jim: That's right. And the context of the day was remember we only have the Old Testament at this point. Sometime people forget in Jesus day we only had the Old Testament. We don't have the Gospels yet. Reminder to some of you who may have forgotten that we don't have the Gospel. We don't have the book of James. We don't have any of Paul's writings. We have none of that. We have the Old Testament which taught the Pharisees and the scribes. They would have taught again I'm going to try not to go too deep on this because you can find this in your commentaries and in your study. They would have taught that wealth was a sign of blessing from God. And so they would have believed that if you were wealthy that you were favored by God. And I don't know who else is going to heaven but y'all are.

Frank: But y'all are. Which is the whole thing. Go back to Job, right? Who sinned? Somebody did something because you had it and then you lost it.

Jim: Right. So, I don't want to go too much further than that, but all of that kind of sits as a subsurface foundation to understand this point is that sometimes gifts are different only by their magnitude. Not because the giver is any different and not because God gives more revere to one than another. So let's take three givers that are in the Bible. Obviously, let's stop at the widow and her two coins. First thing to note there is I'm not saying we should go back to this, but contradictory to what we see today, all giving was public. Jesus was not using his supernatural gift of saying, "Oh, she only gave two." No, he was seeing what everybody gave. And the problem was that the Pharisees, those who want, they were bringing and my word picture, Frank, is you've got these metal vessels and they were not kind of placing it carefully in there. They were holding it up. Maybe they did or didn't, but my word picture is they were holding it up so that when they hit the metal, it made a loud sound. Oh, they gave a lot. And Jesus is saying, I see what's going on here. I see what's going on. They've got so much money that their gift is really probably just a gratuity. But not that one right there. She came and brought the only two coins she had. Now, that was a supernatural understanding of how much wealth she had, but it wasn't supernatural to see that she made that gift. Right. So, he saw that.

Now, on the other side, let's go. And I think these are the book ends in the Bible. Two coins. You know where I think the other book end is? King David.

Frank: Sure. 1 Chronicles 29.

Jim: We just had a little internal discussion here inside of the firm and we updated the value of the gifts because it really is one of the few in the Bible that we can actually translate into today's dollars because of the specificity. It's very specific. I think there are a couple of other places in the Bible where the gift might have been larger, but we don't know. I mean, Abraham's gift to Melchizedek has no specificity.

Frank: True.

Jim: But it was a tenth of everything, so it well could have been more than this. But David's does have that. And so we revalued it.

Frank: But we should have invested in gold and silver 5 years ago. Facts.

Jim: Facts. Gold is 49.25 an ounce as we sit here today. Silver is darn near $100 an ounce. Crazy prices. So when you take King David's gift and you measure it in today's prices, y'all ready for this? 20 billion. That's with a B. Frank as in beer. B as in beer. $20 billion.

Frank: Wow.

Jim: Largest gift that we can see in the Bible by one person. Okay. I think that's book ends. We got two coins and we got 20 billion. God celebrates both of those in the Bible without making a distinction between the two. And then we've got one that's in between that. And it's the gift that Mary lavished on Jesus at Bethany when she anointed him. A jar of perfume worth more than a year's offerings. You and I were just talking. You watched the Chosen episode.

Frank: Season 4, episode 8, isn't it?

Jim: I think season 4, episode 8. If you haven't seen that, check it out. Powerful presentation of what happened here. So, she brings this offering to Jesus, this spikenard perfume, the purest of the pure. In fact, when you see that in the Chosen, the aroma, just the fragrance is so powerful that when she just barely opens the bottle, everybody in the room remember that scene, Frank? Everybody was like, "Whoa, whoa."

Frank: Leans back.

Jim: She got the real stuff here, right? Worth more than a year's wages. Now, here's the point. That gift was probably worth even more than that. Because you have to ask yourself, where did that come from? She's not married. This is Mary. Mary, Martha, Lazarus. They were always part of Jesus's traveling companions. Where did she get that? You read the commentaries and there's several different theories. The one that I buy into is that it was her dowry.

Frank: Right.

Jim: And so if we follow that, if that was her dowry, in the Eastern tradition of the day, if you gave away your dowry, you're giving away your right to marriage. And so she's giving away a lot more than a jar of perfume worth more than a year's wages. She's giving away a full lifestyle.

Frank: Wow.

Jim: No husband, no kids, no grandkids, no life partner, no nothing. She lavished it all on Jesus. And the Bible celebrates her as a giver as well. So the Bible celebrates these three givers for the gifts that they made, but it doesn't make a distinction between the givers. And their gifts are very different. They're very different, which kind of, in the modern day context, Frank, let's just go down a side road for a second. Which is why, and I think we've said this before on here, if we haven't, we need to make sure we say this, which is why if someone made a very large gift to my church and I was the pastor or executive pastor, I would not commend them for their very generous gift because I don't know that it is a generous gift. I know it's a significant gift. Right? If you made a gift of $5 million to our church, the knee-jerk reaction would be for us to thank you for your very generous gift. What do you and I both know in philanthropic giving, it is rare for a person to give away more than 2 to 3% of their net worth. Some do, but it's rare. And if that's the case, if you're giving five million, praise God that you have that, but you have a lot more where that came from. And I'd rather you and God decide whether that's a generous gift or not. Not me.

"Thank you for your very significant gift. As you probably know, in our church, we value every gift, small, large, and in between. Some gifts by their amount allow us to do more and do it faster. Yours is one of those gifts."

Frank: So good.

Jim: "And it is significant to allow us to accelerate our ministry in a way that we could not have done without your gift." There is nothing that I just said there that I can't say factually. I know those things are true.

Frank: That's good.

Jim: But if I said that's a generous gift, I might be inadvertently giving you credit for something that God's not giving you credit for.

Frank: Wow.

Jim: And I got enough to go repent before God. I don't need to add that to the list. You know what I'm saying? Dumb stuff that I'm going to do. So hopefully that's helpful for you that you can take that. Now, it's not that I wouldn't, but the chances are that it might be a smaller gift that might be generous, not a larger gift. And even then, I would be very careful.

Frank: So, this comes up in the context of people usually saying, "Hey, I'm really worried as we're going into this generosity initiative or this season. I don't want to treat people differently. It feels like this could get sideways. I really don't know what this looks like for us." So, help the church leader navigate that that's feeling that tension. What do you say to them in the room when they're feeling that tension of like, I don't disagree that there are different gifts that have different impact? Don't disagree that some people have a different capacity to give than others. How do you help them thread the needle with this truth that all givers are the same, but not all gifts are the same? How do you help them initially navigate that in their heart and in their mind when they're feeling that tension? And if they're going the widow's might, there's a tension in there that they're trying to navigate. And a couple more Bible verses doesn't instantly fix that. So, how do you help guide them through that?

Jim: A couple more Bible verses out of context definitely doesn't help it. We'll just stop there because you know which two I'm talking about. Of course, my two favorites that are always lobbed out in that. The practical consideration is this is somebody might say, "Well, Jim, why did you have a gathering and just have those people there?" They put themselves in a category that was just clear to me that they're different than everybody else in the church. Not in terms of their presence before God, but different in terms of the gifts that they make and how faithful they are in giving those. And I just don't know that I can put them in a room with people who are just starting their giving journey and maybe giving $20 every time they show up and have the same conversation. It really kind of, I can't hit either audience. So, what I'm trying to do is to stratify the audiences. So I can speak to them in their context and in their element more than anything else. Well, that feels like you're getting a bunch of rich people together and having a guy. Hey, by the way, a lot of these people who are in this category are not rich. They're just faithful, man.

Frank: They're just faithful.

Jim: And when I've got a small group of people who are doing a disproportionate share of the total, I mean, I get it that some people are going to have an issue with it, but I'm not going to apologize for the fact that I'll get them in a room, not to tell them how great they are, but to ask them to go first and set the pace because that's who they are traditionally. The truth of the matter is, Frank, if we really look at this in the way that we do it inside of Generis, it's not only not favoritism, it's reverse favoritism. I'm asking you to sacrifice and go first, which is bigger than what I'm going to ask of anybody else in the whole congregation. And we don't stop to think about that.

Frank: That is so good.

Jim: The way that you have conducted yourself in the life of this church as a faithful giver, somebody who's prayerful, somebody who's supportive of our ministry, somebody who is one of the ones, one of the families that when things happen here, you are part of being catalytic and making that happen. Hey, I've seen where you've done it before. I need to ask you to do it again. For God's glory number one and as an example to our people and to get them started for number two. So it's not only not favoritism because we're not giving them any special favors. We're actually asking more of them than we would ask of anybody else in the life of the church.

Frank: Wow.

Jim: That's because we know they're likely to respond to that, right? And then in the same way we have language for leaders, people who are engaged leaders but are not quite in that category because they have a different context in the life of the church. And then we have the congregational people which includes people who are not leaders necessarily not among the faith. They might end up there at some point in time. All givers are the same. It's their gift that's different and that sets them into a different context.

Frank: Right.

Jim: And so we want to speak to them in that context. It would make no sense for me to bring Jim and Nancy who just made their first $50 gift to the church into a meeting with somebody who's been a faithful supporter for 20 years or 10 years or five years. Those two have nothing.

Frank: Talk to both, you've said nothing to either.

Jim: Nothing to either.

Frank: That's the tension that I feel like that's where this causes friction is when we try to say all givers are the same, not all gifts are the same. And the constituency of the church was like, "Well, wait, this feels like favoritism. This feels like all kinds of things that it's not."

Jim: And that's where you and I are trying to set the record straight here on this podcast is to help people see what we see is that I love your way of saying it. When you're trying to talk to everybody, you're not speaking to anybody.

Frank: Because they're like, "I didn't hear that."

Jim: Right.

Frank: So, this will likely trigger some conversations at the local level.

Jim: Absolutely.

Frank: This will trigger some people to go over in James and study that text and see if we're really correct on favoritism or not. So, let's jump over there. How do you address that? Somebody turns the page and goes, "But Jim, you don't understand." In James, there's a one, two, James, look for it. How do you respond to that?

Jim: Go study the text and you'll see that you're wrong.

Frank: That's not what you're gonna say.

Jim: But here's the thing, Frank. What am I saying? Learned people, people who have been to seminary, people who studied, even lay people have not studied it deep enough. I think there's an inherent notion that we want to believe it says something that it doesn't say. We don't want to offend the brother and sister. Hey, I don't want to. You don't want to. We're not. That's not what we're trying to do. I've got a pure heart and a pure conscience about this because we're not trying to I'm just trying to get the faithful and the leaders and the congregation into separate audiences where I can speak to them and hope it'll land in their heart in a way that'll cause them to do something different for God's glory and for God's honor and not to make them smile. Right? I mean that text on favoritism again is the assumption that they are getting some kind of special treatment and favors. The only special treatment you're getting if you're in that faithful core that we ask to start a giving initiative is we're going to ask you to come to a meeting. We're going to ask you to do more than anybody else in the life of the church. If that feels like favoritism to you, then you and I would just have to disagree on what favoritism is.

Frank: It's favoritism. And then the flip side is discriminating against the poor, right? And so it's that tension of going, "Hey, we're not trying to do either one here. We're just having to have direct clear conversations. We're not going to do..."

Jim: And so this is my response. So when somebody says, "Well, I don't want us to treat people differently." My response is, "Don't."

Frank: Right. Or you already are.

Jim: You already are. In the music ministry. Oh, okay. In the music ministry, you already are. You're already doing that. So don't tell me we're not going to treat people different. You're not going to put me up there leading worship on Sunday morning.

Frank: That's good.

Jim: I'm not a bad singer, but I'm not a solo singer. I'm not an ensemble singer. I'm a congregation singer. You're already doing that. You're doing it in some other place. Why do you have different people leading prayer gatherings than people who are actually in prayer? Why? Don't tell me that that's your rationale because you're already doing that in other places and you're making a special rule because money is the conversation.

Frank: That's really good.

Jim: I like that one though.

Frank: My mind goes to don't because the reality is it's don't from the standpoint of if you're worried about creating a culture or getting really weird, just don't get weird. We're just trying to communicate differently. We're just people are in different they segment themselves differently based on the way they give the way they operate and we just want to have clear communications. It's as simple as that. We're not going to do weird other behaviors that would cause us to feel the tension. And here's the good news. The church that's worried about that isn't going to cross that line.

Jim: It's a heart matter, Frank. Yes, I can show you two actions, the same action, one with a pure motive and one with an impure motive. And one of them probably is favoritism and the other one isn't. The action in and of itself is not. I had a pastor many years ago. He looks at me, he sort of got my point. So, he was kind of on my side with the favoritism thing. And he said it this way. He said, "Jim, listen to me. Let's just take two families in my congregation. I've got a lady who's a longtime member of our church. She's a widow. She loves me dearly and every now and then she'll call my assistant and say, 'I'm making pimento cheese sandwiches and tomato soup this Friday. Would the pastor be available to come over and have lunch with me?' And he says, 'She knows that I love those cheese sandwiches and her tomato soup and it's her way of loving me and it's my way of honoring her.' Is that favoritism? Because I did it with her, not with somebody else." He said, "Now I've got another guy in my church. He's a member at one of the most prestigious golf courses in America. Very hard to get in. Very hard to get into. And every now and then he'll say, 'Hey, pastor, what are you doing on Thursday? I don't know. We got the jet cranked up. We're leaving at 6:30. We're going up to play golf and we'll be back by dinner time. You want to go?' Is that favoritism because I go with him? He said, I would say to you that you've got a better case for favoritism if I would go with him and not go have lunch with her. But the truth of the matter is I do both."

Frank: That's so good.

Jim: And I like that because while it might not be a perfect example. Some of you going to want to argue that it may not be a perfect example. It's a good directional example of how you could do that. Cuz he said, "I'm not giving them any credit for anything other than they're my friends and they're loving on me because I'm their pastor and they're doing things for me that are their expression of love and care for me." And I was like, "Go for it, pastor. Your heart's pure and your motive is clear. Go do it. Don't apologize to anybody."

Frank: It all goes back to that key phrase and idea that we've introduced today. If you haven't already heard this, that all givers are the same, but not all gifts are the same. And so, we want to recognize that in God's eyes, everyone's the same. That's important. In our eyes, Lord willing, as we become more sanctified, we see everyone the same as well in the glory of the kindness of God. But we need to recognize that when it comes to our communication and the seasons of our church, there may be different conversations in different gatherings necessary for advancing the gospel and doing the work that God's called us to do.

Jim: The way I wrote this, and I'm not even going to try to say it without reading it directly from the blog post, because when this hit me, this kind of tied the Here's the way that you had the same givers, three givers, very different gifts. Here's the thread that ties these stories together. And this is what I wrote. Frank, the widow's gift was magnanimous because of sacrifice. Mary's gift was profound because of worship and devotion. David's gift was transformational because of its scale and impact. Scripture honors all three, not because the gifts were equal, but because the givers were.

Frank: That is so good.

Jim: I mean, it took me a long time to come to that. I had a little bit of help from Claude. Because I had that idea, these three gifts and out of this and when I that is just exactly the point we're trying to make. Magnanimous because of sacrifice, profound because of worship and devotion, transformational because of scale and impact. And you know what, pastor, in your church, you need all three. You need all three.

Frank: I think it's a great way to wrap up the next Sunday podcast for this week. We'll see you again real soon.